ch as
"the Reign of Terror" and "the Horrors of San Domingo," and History is
abjectly conjured not to repeat herself, as she certainly will do, if
she goes on in the old way. Of course she will. But does she propose to
furnish a fac-simile of any critical epoch which haunts the imaginations
of mankind? That depends upon circumstances. The same barrel will play a
fresh tune by a hair's-breadth shifting of a spring. Two epochs may seem
to be exactly alike, and the men who only remember may seek to terrify
the men who hope by exposing the resemblance. But unless they can show
that all the circumstances are identical, they have no right to infect
the morning with their twilight fears. History insensibly modifies her
plan to secure the maximum of progress with the minimum of catastrophes,
and she repels the flippant insinuation that her children win all their
fresh advantages at the expense of the old crimes.

The story of Hayti is worth telling, apart from its bearing upon
questions connected with the emancipation of slaves. It is a striking
record of the degradation of fine races and the elevation of inferior
ones, and shows with what ease Nature can transfer her good points from
her gifted children and unexpectedly endow with them her neglected
ones,--thus affording us a hint of something that is more permanent and
irreversible than ethnological distinctions, by repeating within our own
time her humane way with her old barbarians whose hair was long. From
them sprang the races which never could have dominated by cunning and
force alone, and which have to lay down their dominion when they have
exhausted everything but force and cunning. It is a story of the
desolation in which the avarice and wrath of man must always travel:
colonial prosperity was nothing but a howling war-path blazed directly
across stately and beautiful human nature. It shows the blood which the
fine hands of luxury never could wash off; the terrible secret at last
betrayed itself. In telling this story, the horrors of San Domingo are
accounted for, and whatever was exceptional in the circumstances is
at the same time marked, to prevent them from being applied without
discrimination to the present condition of America. But the story must
be told from the beginning, for its own sake; otherwise it will be a
bad story, without a moral. If the main features of it are carefully
preserved, it will make its own application.

That, however, is fatal to any att